Please refer to my previous postings (http://d.hatena.ne.jp/itunalily2/20180403)(http://d.hatena.ne.jp/itunalily2/20180404)(http://d.hatena.ne.jp/itunalily2/20180405)(http://d.hatena.ne.jp/itunalily2/20180406)(http://d.hatena.ne.jp/itunalily2/20180407). (Lily)
Mosaic（https://mosaicmagazine.com/essay/）
by Martin Kramer
April 2018
The May 1948 Vote that Made the State of Israel
V. No Decision Was Needed
It might be asked: why didn’t the vote on declaring statehood take place? The answer: by May 12, the day of the People’s Administration meeting, there was no decision left to make.
First, a decision to declare independence as of May 15 had already been taken in Tel Aviv a month earlier by the Zionist Executive Council, the highest body of the Zionist Organization. This “Declaration of Political Independence,” issued on April 12, was largely written by Zalman Rubashov (later Shazar, future third president of Israel), who read it aloud in a dramatic midnight session:
The Zionist Executive Council, the highest body of the world Zionist movement, declares today its decision to establish in the country the high authority of our political independence. . . . Immediately upon the end of the mandate, and no later than May 16, there will come into being a Jewish provisional government.
It was precisely to implement this decision that the Zionist Executive, in the same declaration, created the People’s Administration. Although the April text wasn’t free of ambiguities, Ben-Gurion would insist in the May 12 meeting that “we already have a decision, taken in the Zionist Executive Council, that the state will begin to function on May 16, with the end of the mandate—that is, after May 15!”
All in the room knew that if they didn’t declare the state, someone else would: Menachem Begin.
Second, all in the room knew that if they didn’t declare the state, someone else would. In his book, Sharef noted the sense around the table that “any deferment might provoke internal dissension, which would be likely to impair the yishuv’s combative mood and the morale of its troops.” This “internal dissension” had an unspoken name: Menachem Begin, leader of the Irgun, who had promised to declare a state if the People’s Administration didn’t.
In early May, Begin had published a notice including precisely this warning:
The Hebrew government will be established. There is no maybe—it will rise. If the official leadership establishes a government, we will back it. But if the government gives in to threats, our forces and the majority of the land’s youth will back the free government that will grow from the underground.
Begin thus prepared two alternative messages for broadcast on May 16: the first, professing loyalty to the state if Ben-Gurion declared one; the second, declaring a state himself if Ben-Gurion did not. Everyone in the room knew Begin’s intent. Bechor-Shalom Sheetrit (representing the Sephardim) put it bluntly: “We are alert to the street and we know the mood there. And if we now seem to go soft and retreat from what the street hopes from us, we’ll unleash war in the street.”
Third, no one believed that the Arabs would accept a truce in any case. This was “one point which won common assent,” recalled Sharef. While Ben-Gurion outlined the disadvantages of a truce, he never let his listeners forget that discussion of it was entirely hypothetical, since no Arab partner existed. Peretz Bernstein (General Zionists) made the argument even more forcefully:
If I thought a truce was realistic, I’d be ready to consider it. . . . But there is no force that can guarantee it. . . . Who can promise and what guarantee could be given that the truce won’t be violated? . . . If the neighboring countries have decided to invade, they won’t stop just because we cancel the declaration. Neither the English nor the Americans have the power to prevent this [invasion], if it is as imminent as they think. . . . And if we now say that while yesterday we wanted the state but today we say there is no declaration and there is a truce, this will be an additional rationale for [the Arab states] to invade.
But fourth, and above all, there was no firm opposition to a declaration because the Jewish public and the Hebrew press expected and even demanded one. The yishuv by this point in time was a coiled spring. This is what Shertok meant when he told Secretary of State Marshall that “it was impossible to break the momentum.” Aharon Zisling (Mapam) extended the argument to include Jews everywhere:
The Jews are now united as never before. The splits of the past (and there were such splits) will widen, not narrow, if we wait. When we are at war, the splits diminish. . . . We are at the pinnacle of the ascent, beyond which there is no further ascent, only descent. We are liable to exhaust this force, and then we won’t benefit from its full power.
Besides, how could the yishuv’s leaders hesitate when, as Shertok informed the meeting, even the cautious Chaim Weizmann was clamoring for statehood “now or never”?
So the ten wise men (plus Golda Meyerson, an observer) deliberated and debated, and some gave voice to their nagging doubts, but there was nothing to decide. As another witness, the economist David Horowitz who later founded the Bank of Israel, would write in his memoirs:
There was no other real alternative course. It seemed that the narrow path on which we trod hadn’t been chosen by us of our own free will, but was imposed upon us by hidden forces, over which we had no influence.
Instead of a vote, the participants drifted into a legalistic discussion of whether to declare a “state” or a “government.” It was a distinction without much of a difference, and the consensus (Sharef called it a “tacit agreement”) settled on the state.
There will always be a margin of uncertainty about the proceedings of May 12, but the truth probably most closely conforms to the description given by Shertok in his autobiographical anthology B’sha’ar Ha-ummot (“At the Gate of Nations,” 1956): “The decision to declare independence on Friday May 14, 1948 was taken unanimously in the session of the People’s Administration on May 12” (emphasis added).
Will it ever be remembered mostly as Shertok described it? That still seems unlikely. The persistence of the more dramatic story of a split vote rests on its emotional appeal. But that is unfortunate. For one thing, by elevating Ben-Gurion to the stature of a Moses leading a fear-struck flock, it downplays the grit and fortitude of the 600,000-strong yishuv, which was steeling itself precisely for just such a day. For another, the legend of the split vote occludes the reality of the vote that did take place—and that exercised a lasting impact on Israel’s future.
(To be continued.)
